Engage, Educate, Enjoy!

Tag: interview

We bring you a wonderful interview with Stacy Brown! Stacy is the 21st century learning coordinator from the Davis Academy in Georgia. Stacy is a Voki user since 2010! Her goals in introducing Voki to the Davis Academy are to encourage student engagement, ownership and creativity!

This week we have an interview with Mrs. Stephanie Bullock. Mrs. Bullock is an academic technology teacher from The Lovett School in Atlanta, GA. She a Voki user since 2009! It was great that we have a chance to talk to Mrs. Bullock.

Here’s what Mrs. Bullock likes about Voki:

My students feel like they are creating something original and personal to share with a wider audience.

I love that my students can create their own backgrounds to further personalize their Vokis.

My most favorite thing is that Vokis are easily embeddable and they are there for me to share with the students’ family.

Mrs. Bullock created a Voki about how she used Voki in class. She and her third graders did a really great reading project by creating Voki characters to represents the characters from the books they read!

Q: What would you add to the Voki product?

A:I would add the ability to edit the student Vokis from the teacher account. My students were too young and my time with them was too limited to ask them to handle the audio conversions that were necessary, so I had to keep track of all their usernames and passwords in order to add the audio for them. It was time consuming.

Wider variety of acceptable voice and background formats. I’ve had to open students’ backgrounds using Preview and then export them as low-quality .jpgs in order for them to successfully be uploaded.

The ability to publish a Voki without having to add audio so that the students’ work during one computer class period will be saved for the next time they have class. I haven’t found a way to save their work before they are ready to add audio. (See my work-around below).

Q: Do you have any Voki tricks up your sleeve?

A: I use the application Audacity to convert audio files to the acceptable .mp3 format. My students only have access to the application Audio Recorder on their computer, producing an .m4a file that isn’t an acceptable file type.

To circumvent the publishing issue that I have, I usually type in a filler word like “test” in the audio component to Voki so that I am able to save students’ work from class period to class period.

It’s been a while since we had an interview with a teacher! This week we are featuring Angelyn Cheatham and her favorite Vokis! Angelyn is an elementary technology integration specialist for Garland ISD in Texas. She trains teachers and students on how to use technology tools.

Here are some of the reasons why Angelyn loves Voki:

Engaging for students to use

Safe way to publish student work without identifying faces

Allow students to communicate their messages

Can be integrated into any subject areas

Intuitive for even the youngest students

If you can’t view Angelyn’s Prezi here, click the picture below to open the link!

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In this interview, instructional technology specialist LaQuita Denson tells us about how she uses Voki to train teachers on effective methods of delivering information during lessons, regardless of a student’s learning abilities.

The three features she finds the most useful about Voki are:

The Language Feature: “This is really great with those students who are struggling readers, as well as students from different countries…”

Multiple Vokis: “This is great when you’re doing an assignment [with multiple students], depending on the outcome or objective of the assignment.”

Audio: “…whether you want to do this by text, or have the students use the microphone, as well as recording by phone, depending on the ability of the student…”

Take a look at this short interview to get an idea of how an educational technology professional uses Voki to enhance learning!

Want to be interviewed for the Voki blog?
Send us an email at submit@voki.com and we’ll get in touch!

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We wanted to write an intro for Lisa Nielsen, writer and educator, but she kindly went ahead and wrote a better intro than we could ever come up with. So, without further ado, take it away, Lisa!

Lisa Nielsen
I am the author of The Innovative Educator blog (http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com) and the upcoming book, Teaching Generation Text which focuses on using basic voice and text enabled cell phones in education to bridge the digital divide. I have more than a decade’s worth of experience in working to help New York City school’s educate innovatively.

Goals
My goal with using Voki is to give every student a voice and a face in a fun and engaging way even if they only have access to a phone.

How I use Voki

Voki is a great tool that allows the 21st century student to capture, publish, celebrate and converse about any topic or subject. I love helping innovative educators use Voki. Here are some of the things they are doing.

Students can use Voki in the revision process of their writing by recording a Voki to make sure it sounds right. If it doesn’t, simply revise and re-record.

During publishing parties some students are uncomfortable reading their work. Thanks to Voki they can present their work without embarrassment.

English and Foreign language Learners can use Voki by recording themselves saying dialogue or reading a passage. Listening to the Voki enables them to hear how they sound and work on fluency.

Some of my favorite things about Voki:

It enables students who might not be proficient at writing to tell their story or share their message.

It enables students to publish to an authentic audience in a format where others can comment and keep the conversation going.

It gives a voice to a student who might not feel comfortable speaking publicly.

What would I add to the Voki product?
The ability to add your own Avatar either your photo or drawing.

My favorite Voki trick
Set up pages at the end of units of study where students can share one great thing they learned. This creates a page of our learning which serves as a great reflective tool. I also suggest inviting parents, family members and others in the school to community to leave Voki comments for students.

Like this:

As part of our efforts to strengthen our educator community, we’re introducing you to some of our most enthusiastic Voki for Education users. These educators will answer questions about how they use Voki in the classroom.

This week we bring you Mary Beth, an elementary school teacher in North Philadelphia, PA (USA).

“One thing I loved about Voki was that you could get that code without having to log in or get an account. All my students are under 13, so they can’t create an account at school without parent permission… it was really great that the kids could get the [Voki] code without having to log in and get an account.”

“[My students] had some fun personalizing their avatar. I learned a lot about the kids, just looking at how they chose to dress and accessorize their Voki avatars.”